My latest Critical Thinking column over at DataCenter Knowledge looks at edge colocation start-up EdgeMicro which wants to build out a network of container data centres on mobile towers to serve content.
EdgeMicro co-founder Greg Pettine explained to me that the company’s business model is similar in some respects to edge colocation specialist EdgeConneX but involves building out capacity in much smaller chunks.
“If you look at the EdgeConneX model, they were funded by the cable guys, by Akamai and so forth, who said we need 500kW of capacity in Tier 2 cities,” says Pettine. “Our focus is to just spread that out. As they expand – Netflix, Amazon, any of them – they will need to put more capacity in multiple markets in the next 12 months. What if we spread out and put that in the wireless edge, where most of the content is being consumed anyway?”
Its secret sauce is an appliance called Tower Traffic Xchange, or TTX. The TTX essentially creates an intelligent interface between wireless devices, wireless networks, and content — something that Pettine says hasn’t existed until now. The current process for serving content to a mobile device can be extremely convoluted and expensive.
More over at DCK.
